What did a gathering of Christians in the first century look like and sound like? Wouldn’t you like to eavesdrop? Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall in one of these house churches of the first century? Well, in a way, Paul offers us just that sort of opportunity in 1 Corinthians 14:26-40. Listen for God’s word to you…
What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God.
Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people.
Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? If anyone thinks they are a prophet or otherwise gifted by the Spirit, let them acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. But if anyone ignores this, they will themselves be ignored.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.
So, Paul gives us some insight in this passage into what a meeting of a house church in first century Corinth was really like. And his main purpose here is to wrap up what he has been saying in chapters 12 through 14 about worship. We will look at what Paul has to say under these headings: The Elements of Worship, The Goal of Worship, Fitting and Orderly Worship, People in Worship, and Authority in Worship.
Elements of Worship
In verse 26, Paul mentions five elements of worship. He says, “When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.”
The first element mentioned here in our translation is a hymn. But in the Greek the word is a Psalm. The Psalms were the hymnbook of the early church and the Psalms have remained the hymnbook of the church through the ages. No doubt the first Christians sang the Psalms set to various tunes just like the Jews and Israelites of old.
The second element of worship is a word of instruction. The word in Greek means “a teaching”. Often in the early church there would be readings from the Hebrew Scriptures and from the letters, especially of Paul, and later, readings from the Gospels themselves. Then one member of the church might offer some teaching based upon the readings. In the earliest church there were no paid clergy per se. All the members of the church participated in the worship in various ways. Furthermore, these gatherings were not all that large for the early church met in homes belonging to the members. There might be as few as six people sitting around a table where the Lord’s Supper would be celebrated, followed by worship such as Paul describes. The homes of some wealthy people might accommodate a larger crowd, but in no case more than a hundred people. So, with these smaller groupings it was easier for many to participate in the worship.
The third element of worship Paul mentions is revelation. The word means an unveiling. This might be a word, like the prophecy we talked about last week, or it might be a picture. In any case it was a message given by God to a member of the church to share with the whole gathering. This was not ecstatic speech. What Paul says about the exercise of this gift indicates that the prophets were in control of what they were saying. And so, there might be more than one revelation or prophecy offered. There should also be time allowed in worship for others in the congregation to weigh what is said by way of revelation or prophecy. This is where the gift of discernment, that we talked about a few weeks ago, comes in.
The fourth element of worship Paul mentions is a tongue. As we saw last week, this means that the members of the church either spoke in a human language they had not learned before, or a heavenly language.
Paul is quite clear that if a member of the church speaks in tongues they should wait, at the end of the message, to see if there is someone gifted with the fifth element of worship—interpretation. If there is no interpretation of tongues forthcoming, then the tongues-speaker should be quiet and simply speak to God in tongues. The reason for this has to do with what Paul envisions as the goal of worship.
The Goal of Worship
Paul says, “Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.” That is one of the key goals of the corporate worship service of the church. The end goal is that the church, the people of God, should be built up.
The word translated “build up” literally means to build a house or home. How appropriate since the early church met in homes and our lives are to be a dwelling place for God.
Since the goal of worship is edification for the whole church it is important, as we saw last week, that the words used in worship be intelligible.
Fitting & Orderly Worship
Paul says that everything in worship “should be done in a fitting and orderly way.” The King James Version says, “decently and in order”. These were certainly the watch words of the Presbyterian Church in which I grew up.
Obviously, there was a problem in Corinth with too much chaos in the worship services of the church. Thus, Paul had to introduce an emphasis on order.
But sometimes I wonder: “What would Paul think if he were to visit some churches today?” If he were to visit some of our mainline churches, I am tempted to think that he might see too much order and not enough evidence of the Holy Spirit in action. Well, I guess the bottom line is that we need both order and spontaneity in our worship services.
People in Worship
In this passage Paul also has some memorable things to say about people in worship. This is one of several passages in the New Testament that has led to Paul having a bad rap, especially where women are concerned. Paul says,
Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
What is going on here? Why does Paul speak these seemingly harsh words about the participation of women in the worship services at Corinth?
We must remember that back in chapter 11 Paul made it clear that women were allowed to participate in worship. He talks there about women praying and prophesying in the services. So, obviously, Paul was not against women participating in the worship services of the early church. In fact, he envisions them having a prominent role.
Valeriy A. Aliken, in The Origin of the Weekly Gathering in the Early Church, says,
As householders, women, too, could perform leadership roles and possibly even conduct Christian gatherings, serving as patrons or hosts. A case in point is Lydia, who, according to Luke, hosted a church in her house in Philippi. When Paul and Silas were released from this town’s prison, they went to Lydia’s house, where they met and encouraged the brothers and sisters. Nympha in Laodicea, too, is presented as hosting a church that meets in her house.
There is also the couple, Priscilla and Aquilla, who were friends of Paul, who also hosted the church in their home. Priscilla was such a prominent female leader that her name is mentioned first whenever she and her husband are named.
Furthermore, in Galatians 3:28 Paul makes this sweeping statement: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Paul may have picked up this revolutionary attitude toward women from Jesus. Our Lord had women who travelled with him and the twelve, supporting them out of their means. And he allowed women like Mary to sit at his feet and learn from him.
So, if all this is true, why does Paul say what he does about women being silent? My guess is that there was a particular problem going on in Corinth that Paul needed to address. Remember, this was a church that tended to have chaos in worship anyway. Paul is trying to minimize that.
Also, we need to remember the new situation introduced by Christianity. In the Jewish synagogue, women had to sit separate from the men and were not allowed to learn along with them. Now, under Jesus and Paul, the women are allowed to learn right along with the men and even have leadership roles in worship.
It is my belief that though in later church history the women and men were again seated separately in church, they were together in these early house churches; the women would have had no separate place to sit. This new situation also means that the women might have had lots of questions.
Some of the women in Corinth were obviously tempted to ask questions of their husbands right in the middle of the worship service itself. Anyone who has ever addressed any kind of group as a speaker knows how distracting it can be if people in the audience are talking to one another, however quietly. Thus, in this one situation, Paul is simply encouraging the wives to ask questions of their husbands when they get home instead of disrupting the worship service. Paul is not discouraging all types of speaking on the part of women in church because, after all, he has already said that women may pray and prophesy in church. It’s the question asking in the middle of the service that he is discouraging.
Authority in Worship
Finally, Paul talks about authority in worship. We have already seen how the Corinthian Christians had a hard time accepting Paul’s authority as an apostle. That’s why he is so vociferous about it in chapter 14. He says,
Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? 37 If anyone thinks they are a prophet or otherwise gifted by the Spirit, let them acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. 38 But if anyone ignores this, they will themselves be ignored.[h]
Thus, Paul asserts his authority. But notice especially the basis of Paul’s authority. He bases his authority on the fact that he is conveying the Lord’s command, the word of God.
The word of God is the ultimate authority for everything we do in worship. And as John’s Gospel points out to us, Jesus himself is the word of God. The Bible is the word of God, and our authority, in so far as it points us to Jesus.
At the time of the Reformation, two different views developed as to how the word of God should regulate our worship. Some church leaders said we are allowed to do in worship only those things expressly commanded in Scripture. Other church leaders said that we are allowed to do those things expressly commanded in Scripture and whatever is not forbidden.
Whichever position one takes in that regard, one thing is clear. Paul has not told us everything we need to know about worship in 1 Corinthians 14. There are other elements of worship, like the Lord’s Supper, that are not mentioned here.
Personally, I believe that the more we soak ourselves in the overall message of the Bible, as well as in specific verses of the Bible, we will have wisdom to conduct the worship services of our church aright. The question is: what is our attitude? Whom do we most want to please? If we want to please God, then we will be seeking what God wants our worship to look like.
Let me close with this illustration from leadership guru, Peter Senge…
Imagine that your organization is an ocean liner, and that you are “the leader.” What is your role? I have asked this question of groups of managers many times. The most common answer, not surprisingly, is the captain. Others say, “The navigator, setting the direction.” Still others say, “The helmsman, actually controlling the direction,” or, “the engineer down there stoking the fire, providing energy,” or, “the social director, making sure everybody’s enrolled, involved, and communicating.” While these are legitimate leadership roles, there is another that, in many ways, eclipses them all in importance. Yet, rarely does anyone think of it.
The neglected leadership role is the designer of the ship. No one has a more sweeping influence than the designer. What good does it do for the captain to say, “Turn starboard 30 degrees,” when the designer has built a rudder that will turn only to port, or that takes 6 hours to turn to starboard? It’s fruitless to be the leader in an organization that is poorly designed. Isn’t it interesting that so few managers think of the ship’s designer when they think of the leader’s role?[1]
Now, here’s the key question… Who is the designer of the Church? Is it not God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Repeatedly Paul tells us in his letters that Jesus is the head of the Church. Jesus is the leader of the Church and the one who has designed the way it should work. Jesus is also our captain. The Holy Spirit is our navigator. The Spirit is also our engineer, stoking the fire.
But here’s the problem… Paul summarizes it in Colossians 2:19… He says that some people in the church “have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.”
The Church will grow properly in its worship and in all dimensions of her life if we remain connected to our head who is Jesus Christ. And how do we remain connected to him?
In John 15:7 Jesus answers that question. He says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
We stay connected to Jesus, we abide in him, by allowing his words to abide in us. This book, the Bible, and especially the words of Jesus, are our instruction manual for life and worship. Let’s continue to soak ourselves in this book, to steep ourselves in the words of Jesus.
Let’s pray…
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